Hi everyone, I am moving Airflow's "maintainer skill" rules to the shared "steward" project, which will serve as the base for the future ASF-wide initiative. For those curious, I have already ported the skills for security workflows, PR triage, and review to the steward repository: https://github.com/apache/airflow-steward/tree/main/.claude/skills.
I propose wiring these skills into Airflow via a Git submodule. While we have had past difficulties with submodules, this approach is justified here: - Users who do not utilize agentic skills will be unaffected. - We developed a skill to automate submodule updates, addressing previous pain points. - This removes all skill-related code and almost all documentation (except bootstrapping) from the main Airflow repository. Once we switch, and make sure all "airflow-specific" things are in Airflow, further "steward" work should happen outside of Airflow repo - no more 1000+ English markdown PRs in Airflow :). We have a similar setup for our security project, "airflow-s." I am applying feedback from Shahar; we previously collaborated on some security-management related work using it, and I recall it being a smooth experience (Shahar, please confirm). I would appreciate (positive :)) reviews on this prerequisite PR: https://github.com/apache/airflow/pull/66283. Once merged, I will follow up by replacing the current skills with symbolic links to the submodule. We can transition to a subrepo or automated extraction once the "steward (to be renamed)" project stabilizes. Best, Jarek On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 11:37 AM Jarek Potiuk <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I would like to provide an update regarding the recent "airflow-steward" > and "airflow-s" messages you may have seen. I mistakenly configured a new > repository to send notifications to the dev@ list, unintentionally > sharing some early-stage details a bit sooner than I thought. > > I have been working at an accelerated pace (pretty much 150% of my time > over the last one-two months) due to an emerging security "crisis" in the > industry. New AI models, such as Anthropic’s Mythos (which resulted in the > recently announced cross-industry Project Glasswing [1]), have become > exceptionally fast at identifying and chaining security vulnerabilities. > This has forced a shift in how we handle security, moving from reactive > responses to proactive scanning. We expect an exponential growth in > high-quality security reports, and we are preparing to catch these issues > during the development process—before code is even released. > > Last month, the ASF announced the Responsible AI Initiative [2], supported > by Anthropic and Alpha-Omega. I am currently leading a proposal to > transition our recent work into a new "Apache Steward" PMC, which is > expected to be discussed at the next ASF board meeting on May 20th. > > Because of the urgency, I have had to make some rapid decisions and move > faster than our usual PMC pace. My goal is to ensure Apache Steward helps > the open-source community navigate this transition successfully. For > Airflow (and other projects), this starts with self-cleaning of security > issues first. It very likely means a renewed focus on the "Airflow Beach > Cleaning" [3] initiative to prune historical baggage and manage > dependencies more effectively using new agentic tooling (it had previously > hit some scaling roadblocks - that are now unblocked with Agentic AI). > > We now have Airflow Steward [4] as the first stage of the "extracting > tooling" - this will likely become "Apache Steward" - if all stars align. > > I apologize for the hectic communication. I will continue to keep everyone > updated as things progress. If you have any specific questions, please feel > free to ask here. We can keep that thread to keep everyone updated. > > Best regards, > > Jarek Potiuk > > [1] Project Glasswing https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing > [2] Responsible AI Initiative of ASF - > https://news.apache.org/foundation/entry/the-apache-software-foundation-launches-10m-responsible-ai-initiative-with-initial-1-75m-donation > [3] Airflow Beach Cleaning Keynote from Airflow Summit 2024 - > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6gfoVJXWEE > [4] Airflow Steward - https://github.com/apache/airflow-steward > >
